


Not to Disappear

by withnothingtangible



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Character Study, Multi, One Shot, doesn't look like it's gonna happen though, these three deserve a happy ending dammit blizzard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 09:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11941011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withnothingtangible/pseuds/withnothingtangible
Summary: "What's in a name? that which we call a rose/ By any other word would smell as sweet;" but names remind us of who we are, and who we are isn't always who we want (or need) to be.Character study based on Ana's comic "Old Soldiers." One-shot.I think too much about these three and I am just playing with Blizzard's toys in their sandbox.





	Not to Disappear

It was fitting that she dwelt here, in the necropolis, in the tomb of the ancestors of her people. Ana Amari was dead. It was better that way. 

 

Being Shrike was easier than being Ana. Shrike didn't have a daughter bent on following in their footsteps. Shrike didn't have two ex-lovers who were supposed to have died in an explosion that killed more than just the two of them. Shrike didn't have an old friend and protege that had been kidnapped and brainwashed into being an assassin for a highly dangerous terrorist organisation. 

 

Shrike just had the mission, the bounties, the project. Angela would be angry that her life's work would be used in this way. Ana might have cared. Shrike simply did not.

 

Finding and killing Talon agents as Shrike was easy. Nothing was personal. Each bounty they took got put into the next mission, more intel, more supplies. Besides, rent was cheap, and the dead don't mind if you're behind on payments. 

 

But at night, late after a bounty, things became less simple. It was just Ana on the single mattress on the floor, the photographs of her past there. Her daughter, her lovers, the team. All there smiling from happier times. Her next target was plastered all over the monitors. A man in a black cloak with a horse-skull mask. Ana didn't blame him. She knew the comforts that a mask could bring. 

 

As a sniper she was used to patience. As Shrike this counted double. Shrike answered to no one, Shrike had no pressing obligations. Shrike had all the time in the world. A bounty meant that Shrike had to be more careful, more patient. Watch. Observe. Learn. Gather all the facts and resources and then strike. The dead wouldn't mind her company for a little while longer as she carefully crafted her plan, carefully gathered supplies, returning at odd hours after a stake out. She didn't have to tiptoe her way in when she was exhausted after a mission. It was hard to wake the dead.

 

***

 

Soldier76 stood looking at a poster of some poor wanted soul. The masked figure in portrayed on the screen looked like a  formidable opponent. Not an easy target. Must be able to cause a considerable amount of trouble with such a high price on their head. He couldn't see any of the figures features, but something about the way they stood looked familiar to a part of him that he thought had gone, that had died in the explosion with Reyes. The same part of him that still called him Gabe, the part of him that would still answer to Jack Morrison. 

 

But he wasn't that man anymore. He couldn't be, not after everything that's happened. Overwatch was gone, there was no need for Jack. He could get so much more done as Soldier76. Being dead grants you an anonymity that Jack hadn't been able to take pleasure in since Overwatch had started. And that anonymity had led him here. He could strike at Talon from the shadows. No need for official sanction, for politicians or the UN. Soldier76 would only answer to himself at the end of the day. And Soldier76 wasn't in it for the money. He would pass on collecting the bounty. He would stick to the original mission. 

 

***

 

This stakeout was supposed to be a standard one. Watch. Observe. Get out. Get home (heh, home). Analyse. Learn. Plan. 

 

It was supposed to be simple. But then a masked figure shows up. Not the one that was supposed to be her target. He used an orange visor across his face and his hair was white and he was wearing a jacket with the number 76 on the back but she knew him. 

 

She knew him. 

 

He had to come back and  ruin it didn't he. 

 

He was sprinting his way to the entrance to the compound she had been painstakingly staking out. She had once promised to always have his back. Death didn't have its usual sway over such vows this time. 

 

So she scoped in.

 

***

 

He had never been one for stakeouts. So he charged in, gun blazing. He was already dead anyway, he had nothing to lose. His training and the body pumped with whatever cocktail of chemicals and gene therapies had yet to let him down. Dozens of bodies fell to the ground, but none of them wore a black hood and a white mask. 

 

And then, a voice, both completely alien and familiar: "Right here, Jack."

 

And then pain. 

 

***

 

This wasn’t part of the plan. This is not how her first glimpse of the one they called Reaper was supposed to go. But she had the shot and she took it. Loaded a different cartridge for Soldier76. For Jack. She yelled at him to get back in the fight. She couldn’t lose him. Not again. 

 

***

 

His name again. From someone else who was supposed to be dead. Not that he could judge.  The distraction giving him enough time to tackle his assailant. He didn’t have time to think about what this meant. His pain was gone. He just needed to take the target out. The mission parameters stay the same.

 

***

 

Her name tasted bitter in his mouth and his own hurt worse when coming from hers.  _ Of course she would take his side.  _ Overwatch had taken so much from them. There was hardly anything of them left, just empty shells of people who used to be something. If she could just see what it had done to them maybe she’d choose his side this time. Overwatch would pay, for what they did to him, for what they did to her, for what they did to all of them. 

 

***

 

When he said her name it felt like coming home. She had spent so much time trying to stay out of it, work from the shadows. But her name in his mouth unravelled her resolve to stay away. He needed her as much as he needed him. They had both lost so much. Both their names coming from a ghost that had vapourised before their very eyes had stripped away the layers she had been so carefully crafting. One word from his mouth and she was his, just as much as Gabe had been theirs a lifetime ago. 

 

***

 

When she had showed him her hideout he had tried to suppress a laugh but it came out bitter and barking. A tomb for two ghosts who had been haunted by their own. She showed him tech that the doctor had worked on tirelessly when trying to repair the younger ninja brother and let him tinker and develop their arsenal. Who they had thought was their own personal ghost no longer simply haunted them but also hunted those they had worked with in the past. They needed to prepare. They needed to plan. They needed to put themselves aside as they had done so many times in the past in order to serve the greater good. The war had to go on.

 

***

 

When he had finally fallen asleep, and the tension he always carried loosened its grip on his forehead, she took out the photograph of the three of them. Together, as they always were, and then as they had always wished to be. He was younger in the photographs, his hair still blonde and his face less stern more confident. He used to laugh more then. The choked sound he had made when she brought him here didn’t count. 

 

It couldn’t count. 

 

He had never made plans for the future. The war unrelenting and unending in his mind. He could never let go, could never imagine a future without fighting - at least not for himself. She was guilty of this too of course, here she was re-entering a fight she had died to escape from. For the greater good, for the future, for her daughter, for the people of this earth that she had sworn to protect. 

 

She just wanted some good of her own - of their own - to hang on to, to keep her warm at night and when the more sinister darkness comes creeping in. 

 

Was that too much to ask?

  
  



End file.
